'Make a stand for independent, creative film making in a world where the pressures of conformism and commercialism are becoming more powerful every day'
Lindsay Anderson.

Thursday, 14 January 2016

The Quiller Memorandum.

How could any
one shot a film, albeit in West Berlin, and not show or even mention the
physical division that existed in Berlin from 1961 is beyond me. Maybe its
because the film depended in part on American finance and that country refused
to acknowledge that East Germany was a country in its own right – not unusual
if you don’t agree with something ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist!

Directed by the
British film director Michael Anderson, based on the novel The Berlin Memorandum by Elleston Trevor who wrote it under the pen
name of Adam Hall, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter The Quiller Memorandum
(1966) deals with the upsurge of support for neo-Nazism in post war Germany.Quiller (George Segal) is brought back from
vacation and posted to Berlin to locate the head quarters of Phoenix an
underground organization that that still believes in the teachings of one Adolf
Hitler and led by Oktober (Max von Sydow). When Quiller meets his controller
Pol (Alec Guinness) it’s explained to him that the two previous agents tasked
with the job have both met a sticky end. Refusing any assistance he sets out to
locate the organization but during his investigations he meets a femme fatal in
the shape of Inge Lindt (Senta Berger) who offers to help.

Other than
Guinness none of the actors on display are very believable with Segal being the
worst culprit enacting an unbelievably hammy performance. Pinter script is as exciting as a wet week in
Halifax and would barely rate as a decent B-movie script with its lack of any
real exciting action sequences also unusually for this type of movie completely
devoid of any narrative plot twists. To sum up the whole thing is unremarkable,
boasting a particularly dull script and some really corny acting. Not a patch
on Guy Hamilton’s Funeral in Berlin the
same year but lets not forget that was written by Len Deighton and starred
Michael Caine as Harry Palmer – now’s there’s a character you can believe
in.